


some nights like these

by Nimravidae



Category: Turn (TV 2014)
Genre: Anal Sex, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Sex, Fighting Which Leads To Tender Sex, M/M, Marking, Nightmares, Possessive Behavior, Possessive Sex, sex tears
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-11
Updated: 2017-06-11
Packaged: 2018-11-12 22:12:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11171121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nimravidae/pseuds/Nimravidae
Summary: Following his return to camp, Benjamin has yet to answer questions regarding his days lost in the wound, and the stranger who tended to his wounds. And he doesn't understand why Washington has been so cold to him upon his return.(Post-Sarah but also Pre-Last Time We See Sarah)





	some nights like these

**Author's Note:**

> This has been a WIP since September of 2016.

 

More nights than not, Benjamin Tallmadge laid awake staring at the rough ceiling of his tent. It wasn’t a new development in his moods, he had spent many nights the previous year doing just the same until sleep would inevitably hook its claws into his mind and drag him down under the dark waves of exhaustion - and he is sure he will continue to do such long after this night passes. 

He sleeps less, he knows, now. His cot just as rough and stiff as it was before, his thin blanket just as poor at keeping the chill away - not much changed in his surroundings. They had marched, they had fought, they had won and lost and brought battles and skirmishes to close with a decision hanging on either side - but each day, each week that past only served to keep Ben awake longer and longer into the night. 

He had, like so many nights before, kicked his blanket down to the end of the cot and hiked his shirt high on his chest. If he thinks for more than a moment, he can remember Sarah’s touch so well (he doesn’t want to, but his skin still recalls her hands upon it) but it isn’t what he recalls as he draws his hand to his own leg and lets his fingertips trace the risen, twisted scar.

Looking is out of the question. He should have never been caught so unaware, been captured by an enemy out of uniform - for God's sake he was a  _ spymaster _ , he could damn well act like. Eyes fixated on the ceiling, if he wouldn’t rather not be caught so improper - he would do this in the grass out in a clearing. It was cooler and he could look upon the stars while he lost himself in thought, in memories so hurried and confusing that sorting through them often felt like attempting to decipher a language he hadn’t learned.

Memorizing the ridges of his own scar, Ben takes shaken breath in and closes his eyes:

He can recall shooting Worthington. The pain, blossoming hot in his chest and gut, unmistakable. Dragging him through the dirt and mud, taking the cross off his body (He doesn’t remember if he begged for forgiveness then or later or ever at all) and heaving him to the river. He can summon up every memory he wants, the agony of the shot - of being thrown from the horse - all of it.

Ben’s palm fits just so over the mark, healed over to a puckered pink, and he knows just how much of it is his fault. He should have had a better grasp of his surroundings, he should have known to expect that Worthington was meeting someone, he should have anticipated - like a good spymaster. 

Despair floods him at once, Washington was disappointed in him. That much is so agonizingly, painfully clear. He didn’t order Ben out on any missions, he didn’t take his report past:

_ “Has Worthington been taken care of?” _

_ “Yes, sir. Your Excellency, if I could-” _

_ “Dismissed.” _

It was a blur of just the same following that encounter - dismissed abruptly after introducing Anna. Dismissed after trying to apologize. Dismissed after trying to argue, all without so much as a fragmented glance upwards at Ben - it was frustrating, it was agonizing. If Sarah’s rejection stung, Washington’s was slowly shredding him apart. It’s disappointment, it has to be, he couldn’t even fix his own mistakes in the woods - he couldn’t even fix himself after such an incident. He lies away now because sleeping comes at such heavy costs, dredging up the sheer terror and agony - each heartbeat that may as well be his last. 

His fingertips press against his scar, a faint tingle of sensation rippling under his skin, it’s enough to keep him awake. For now, he thinks, for now. He doesn’t want to sleep, he doesn’t want to think - he just wants…

Washington. He wants Washington, he wants his hands in such a familiar position resting against his hips, he wants his teeth scraping the skin at the back of his neck, he wants his breath washing hot to make him shiver. He wants his voice, rough and low like oncoming thunder, to roll through him and tell him it  _ isn’t his fault _ .

Guilt pools in his stomach. He wants Washington to kiss him like he did whenever Ben did something  _ good,  _ he wants Washington to look at him with eyes softened from their usual frozen wasteland. He wants him to trust him again, to speak to him like something more than just another peg in the rolling wheel of war. 

And yet, he doesn’t deserve it. He doesn’t deserve rough palms and sweet words - he doesn’t deserve the taste of flesh when Washington guides him to his knees, the way he makes salty and bitter so, so sweet. A lump forms in his throat, and all knots of arousal that built around the image die without dramatics. 

A walk. He stands with a grunt of effort - his leg would be stiff for a while still, and the sudden change of position from lying to standing was too much too quickly for the limb to remain content. Flexing it experimentally, he deems himself capable enough to continue - to take up his waistcoat, wind his neckcloth ‘round his throat. He wouldn’t be caught without proper dress, even in the dead of the night. 

He’s already made such a fool out of himself. With Worthington, with Gamble - with Sarah.

Sarah.

Ben closes his eyes. Could Washington know about her? They never pretended as though their relationship bared a certain brand of exclusivity (Ben was sure the nights in which he did not serve to warm the General’s bedside, that particular red-haired aide-de-camp did) and Ben knew far better than to ask it of him. They were not a pair, he and Washington. They were simply one of many opportunities of comfort that were longed for by men at war.

He knows this, he knows that there is no reason for him to think Washington retains a hold over him in such a fashion but burrowed there in his gut remains that seed of guilt. Festering and growing both at once as he diligently waters it with his own frustrations and late nights lying awake wishing he hadn’t if not to know for sure then, if this would be the wedge driven between them. He sighs, pulling his jacket over his arms, it remains a struggle.

The air is warm, whispering breezes lingering and twisting along - hardly enough to blow away the remaining scattered leaves that linger about camp. The clouds that threatened the day broke apart long ago, leaving the skies freshly bared and not at all blotted away by the smoldering remains of smothered campfire. His eyes drift up, watching as he walks around the edges of camp - footfalls quiet as to not wake those who sleep in the tents he passes between. Not all the army is asleep. To pair enough drunken snores there are some voices that slip through the quiet - just the same as bugs that buzz and chirp from the woods and the occasional distant call of an owl on the hunt. 

There are a million things he could wonder, of the skies or the trees or the people around him but his eyes pull traitorously from the heavens to instead the distance just a short distance away. It was like his body guided him without his knowledge, craving what he wanted with desperation, craving what he cannot have (what he doesn’t deserve to have). He should turn, walk back across to his tent - follow the common footsteps and take himself away from here. He could walk past where Caleb is lying, or Anna, he could go anywhere that isn’t  _ here  _ and yet here he stands. 

It’s late, exceedingly so, but the glow of candlelight peers out from the well-laced sides of Washington’s tent nonetheless. The hours he stays surprises few so deep into this seemingly endless fight, and still, Ben finds himself staring as though it was something so new and rare that he needs to soak in the sight lest it be gone forever. The movement from his walk leaves a faint ache deep in his leg and forces him to favor his other more as he steps towards the light, half-expecting it to pinch out and vanish as he approaches.

Slow, each step brings him closer with a new resolve. He needs answers, he needs the purpose Washington gives him, the flame that the man's very presence seems to imbue within him has fizzed down and he craves a new light set to it. Heartbeat drumming out the way his mind screams at him to leave, leave, leave, he makes his approach more audible only as he is but a few breaths from the canvas. Perhaps it is not too late?

Perhaps he can still turn back and let the agonizing repetition of  _ whywhywhywhy _ run through his mind over and over and over until sunlight breaks overhead? 

Perhaps bleeds to nothing as his fingers curl against the fabric and pull the flap back to enter. 

Of course Washington is still awake, head bowed over a report while Hamilton mutters under his breath, pressed tightly against the General’s shoulder as he points out some line. Of course. Ben should have anticipated this, but no amount of expecting the blow lessens the pain it inflicts. His chest clenches around the ice settled rather neatly in its cavity. The scratching stops, Washington’s shoulders rise and fall for just a single, long, moment before he looks up.

“Major Tallmadge,” he says. Flat. Emotionless. The ice chips and cracks, threatening to shatter. Hamilton stares at him, bright eyes a challenge, a threat, and a question all at once. He mutters, under his breath, to Washington - a comment Ben can’t hear - but that curls the smaller man's lips into a quick smirk when it earns him a huff of amusement from the General. 

An emotion too close to jealousy flares in Ben’s gut, but dies as Hamilton moves from where he hunches at Washington’s desk and straightens his jacket, “Evening, Major.”

Ben inclines his head, a greeting as he focuses on the task of un-welding his lips from each other and throwing the weight off his tongue. 

“Your Excellency, Lieutenant Colonel.” A second bow of his head, mostly because his rapid-fire mind cannot be sure it happened the first time. He must’ve interrupted them, walked in on their private moment and now it is truly sealed that Ben is no longer needed. He should leave. Leave them to their dalliance, leave them to their stolen nights. “I came to… I wish,” he clears his throat. “I would like to request a moment to speak with you, your Excellency.”

The words come stuttered and broken and fall without grace or well-composure (very unlike Hamilton, his traitorous mind offers) but at least they are out. Washington leans back in his chair, his gaze effortlessly slipping through the cracks of Ben’s roughened exterior, like he’s memorized where all of them are and wheedled himself a perfect hole just for those piercing blue eyes and let it bore right into his heart.

“You are dismissed,” Ben’s stomach sinks. Of course, his chin fits against his chest as his frozen, stiff limbs refuse to move to allow for his exit, “Hamilton. Major Tallmadge, you will stay. I believe you are correct, no matter the hour, we have much to discuss.”

Ben finds a significant amount of interest in the tent floor, only sparing a glance up to see if the rage upon Hamilton’s face is as evident as it should be. To his shock he finds none, only a soft little air of contentment - of a man who made a prediction and is rather pleased to know he was very, very right. The young aide-de-camp gives Ben’s arm a soft pat as he wriggles past him through the exit. “Good night, your Excellency,” he says with his back facing them. “You as well, Major.”

He only wishes he could croak out the proper response, but instead he stands there at the proper attention and waits. Waits for… waits for whatever the dread in his blood is telling him he should be waiting for. Yelling? Shouting and raging that will wake the entire camp? Or perhaps a quieter, personal resentment that seethes nearly silently in whispered words - spoken in the same range that Washington used to say all the praises he wished to inflict upon Washington's body.

His hands remain folded behind his back. 

“We have much to speak of, Benjamin.” Once, the use of his Christian name from those lips would spark fires in Ben’s belly, have his knees going weak already urging him to the ground to worship Washington however he pleased. Now it made his entire body stiffen in a far less pleasing sense. The man (the mountain, the God) stands, his hands behind his back as he circles around his desk.

Washington continued: “You dispatched of Worthington as was your order, but in the process were captured by a British lieutenant who had thwarted us once before.”  One hand freed itself, dragging the tip of two fingers along the edge of the rough wood, it’s enough to draw Ben’s attention, to hold it. 

“You were beaten, rendered unconscious, tied and draped off the back of your horse, shot and returned in clothing that did not previously belong to you with your injury cleaned and stitched.” For punctuation, he sharply twitched his fingers from the ledge, standing instead in front of the desk. Nothing but air and fear and shame lingering between them now. “What was her name, Major?”

He knows. He knows. Panic swells and Ben’s throat closes around the name - God, if he didn’t have to do this he would spend every waking moment in true, honest repentance. On his knees before a cross only, his hands would do nothing but stay together as he begged forgiveness. “I don’t know wha--”

“Her  _ name,  _ Benjamin.”

“Sarah.” It slips so easily from his lips. “Sarah, her name was Sarah Livingston.”

Washington makes a noise, blunt in the back of his throat,  _ hmf _ , but otherwise lets the silence slip through around them. He watches him, though, and Ben nearly longs for the days when he wouldn’t so much as spare a once-over or a side-glance up at him because his eyes pierce through his flesh and bone and muscle and ice and straight into his heart, into his soul. Reading out a list of sins and mistakes and follies and failures right where they were burned into his deepest, most intimate places. 

“While you were being…assisted,” the way Washington says the word, Ben nearly mistakes it for something less innocuous in nature, “your horse returned to camp without you. Such a thing alone would rise the obvious thought that while you were on your mission, you had been injured or captured or at the very least stranded.” He stops looking at Ben, the relief flooding with a twirling dance of guilt and dread as Washington mentions his horse. 

He hadn’t thought…he thought the stallion had taken off - found some pasture to graze or river to drink in, not galloped back to camp. The lump in his throat grows substantially, choking the words, the apologies, the begging for forgiveness from him. His gaze drops.

“Such a thing would be an omen by itself but, as I am sure you have become aware, a wound to the leg bleeds.” Oh, God. How long had he been on the back of that animal before it bucked him? How long did he bleed out upon it?

Washington’s voice was thick, a heavy emotion strangling around his words: “Do you understand, how much pain it caused to see your horse return with a flank coated in blood? To stand beside men who knew not how much your service to this cause matters and act as though the thought of your death was not--” he pauses, a moment and the ground blurs beneath Ben’s sight. He blinks clarity back into them, and dares himself to look up.

Washington’s fingers grip tight at the edge of the desk, holding tight as though it were the only thing that kept him solid. He leans back against it, and Ben sucks in a rattling breath - full of the intent to apologize but the words won’t come to him. His lips part but he can hardly breathe, maybe he should start rattling off the excuses now - save himself from his flayed dignity.

But he can’t.

Or he won’t. 

“I shouldn’t have allowed that mission, Benjamin.”

But sir, he wants to say, it was simple. Easy dispatch of one man, it was only that Gamble had him by surprise - took him at a disadvantage. “It was a mistake,” Washington says before Ben can rally the air in his lungs enough to speak, “One that I will not be making again, Major.”

“Not be - Sir!” Ben moves half a step forward as the words force themselves past the rock-hard pride sitting in his throat. “It was an accident, sir, and with all due respect you cannot mean that. I have worked with this ring, they  _ trust  _ me, and I am more than capable of continuing to lead it.”

Washington looks as though he is going to cut him off - dark eyes flashing but the words tumble up from Ben’s chest and out his mouth before he can stop them.

“Are you more concerned about my abilities as a spymaster or that I was forced, after - as you were to remind me - being shot and clobbered by the very man who  _ killed  _ Sackett after you refused to take  _ my  _ word, to take refuge with a woman for a day before I was able to return to camp?” 

“You abandoned your post and let me think you dead.”

“I abandoned  _ nothing!  _ You sent me on that mission, you told me where to go, how could I have abandoned my post doing precisely what you told me to do?” 

The muscle in Washington’s jaw jumps as he grinds his teeth. Like a bull flaring its nostrils before a charge, there was no way to misinterpret it as a good thing, but Ben’s mind refused to process in time. “Is this about Sarah or is it about me, sir? Because I did my job, I killed Worthington and I took care of Gamble and I tried to stop the counterfeiters - I did it all for this army, for this cause. If you are unhappy with my work, say it - or say whatever else is plaguing you.”

His breath fills his lungs with all the cold sharpness of ice, and his mind relays the words he just spat at the feet of his commander. But Washington draws himself up before Ben rally the apology he cannot mean. “Major Tallmadge,” he says, dark and low and filled with an only-just restrained rage. He steps forward once, twice and Ben flexes his legs to resist the urge to scramble backwards from him. He stays infuriatingly put, until Washington looms overhead, looking colossal as he blocks the lights from the candles at his desk. “You are speaking to your Commander-in-Chief, and if you do not adjust your tone accordingly I  _ will _ have you court martialed and flogged for your insolence.”

When he breathes, Ben catches the distant and familiar scent of gunpowder and horses, leather and citrus. A combination found sticking to the skin of nearly every officer, but somehow unique to a moment such as this. He finds his breath tied to his rage and a certain, strange and alien calmness. He tilts his head up to match Washington’s gaze and hisses, “Then do it.  _ Sir.”  _

Like lightning the air finds a hot and palpable charge between them. Something flaming and burning and twisting. It’s acidic and sharp and Ben feels himself standing on a sort of precipice. Like what happens next determines the course of history itself. His mouth feels suddenly dry and his heart feels suddenly motionless. 

What happens next is Washington grabs him, and he kisses him. Hard and bruising, fingers dig into Ben’s skin through layers of wool and linen and threaten to leave marks upon his bicep. His lips are unforgiving, tongue unrelenting as it shoves its way to Ben’s unresisting mouth. Like he’s taking him, devouring him whole to stake claim to his being. Planting his flag so that no other man could build upon him, so that there is no question as to his belonging. Washington kisses him like he thought he would never be able to again.

And Ben clings to him, fingers fisted in the wool of his jacket, pulling himself up to his toes to meet the ferocity of the man above him. He’s raw and animalistic and Ben drinks it in like a dying man presented with water. 

They only part to gasp for air. Between them, Washington breathes out something that only serves to shatter Ben’s resolve to continue this battle and prove himself right. He says it against Ben’s lips, he whispers it like some mangled prayer. “Never leave me again.”

All he can do is drag his lips across the warm, kiss-slick ones before him and promise, “I won’t.”

They meet again in a clashing of teeth and tongue, hands slipping down to grapple for clothing and flesh and simply one another. Seams rip at Ben’s shirt, popping and tearing like it was made with the most delicate of silks. His clothes are shredded from him, torn and scattered as he pulls and claws at the barriers that keep him from pressing his hands to the fever-hot flesh of Washington’s body. They fall away, leaving nothing but aged, scar-marred skin. 

Ben reaches for him, but a hand ‘round his wrist stop him short. “Where did she touch you?” Washington asks, in a voice that sounds like the heavy hooves of horses trodding over worn gravel. Ben tells him without pause, letting the sense-memories of her delicate fingers tracing is collar be replaced by the calloused touch of war-worn hands. 

His lips fall where hers did, his hands where hers did, his tongue where hers did. 

“She kissed me there,” he gasps as Washington falls to his knees and traces his lips across Ben’s stomach. He doesn’t kiss him. He bites. He sinks his teeth into the flesh of his abdomen, a physical claim as the fragile veins shatter and well blood under his skin. He sucks similar bruises at the tops of his breeches.

He asks, “Did she do this?”

Ben gasps back, “No.”

No, she did not undo his breeches and press her lips to his scar. No she did not trace the healing ridge of it with her tongue, letting him feel the sensation of being both anew and numbed all at once. No, she did not taunt him, clipping teeth at the rise of his hip and wrap her hand around the base of his swelling cock. She did not rise to her feet and loom above him, she did not grab him and pull him forward, she did not leave a thundercloud of markings upon throat. Ones that could only ever be hidden should his cravat not dip below acceptable placement. One’s that he may push his fingers into later and touch and surge with memories that make him stiffen in his bedroll alone. 

She did not claim him the way Washington does. 

He expects fully to be guided over the desk. So rare were such encounters before, where they could spare the time and resources to sheathe Washington within his body but Ben recalls the ways they would happen. Spreading him upon his desk or bending him over it so that his rear sticks up in the air for him, presented like an animal. He would be treated with oils warmed between hands, perhaps a tongue and spit if it could not be spared. And he would be taken so thoroughly that he could never believe that such a thing were possible. Wrung out like wet cloth, dripping pleasure as Washington finds his place deep inside him. Thrusting into him until his toes curl pathetically against the filthy floor and his body is nothing but a vessel of pleasure and need. 

It is what he expects, but it is not what he is given. No, the first step towards the desk is countered instead. And God, Ben assumes he is to be sent away now. A final punishment for his assumed indiscretions, a final curse placed upon him, a final scorning of a once-lover. To be left cold and alone. But he is not, no, he is instead met with a step backwards, towards the cot placed in the corner in want of proper lodging. 

“Sir?” His voice crackles around the word. 

“Did she have you in a bed, Benjamin?” He nods, confirming this. “Then so shall I.” 

He finds himself in another position which was once nothing more than a quaint little fantasy of a wandering mind. A thought, a wonder, a dream that he could have on those rare moments alone. Ben finds himself nude before Washington. Fully so, stripped from his breeches and stockings and boots and laid as bare as the day he was born into the word and laid down upon the rough linen of the bedclothes. But he doesn’t mind the scratch of it, he is far too distracted by the man hovering above him, settled between his spread legs. Those eyes, once cold, raking along his bare flesh, committing him to memory and choosing his path like a war map. 

Hands sear his thighs as they urge them to spread for him. Ben, as he ever has, yields to the touch. 

“Did she kiss you here?” He asks, and there is something under the question that Ben cannot identify. He asks with something that sounds so much like sadness, lips high on the inside of Ben’s thigh. “Here?” He asks again, when Ben tells him she did not, with the same distant affection mingled closely with melancholy. The action itself is met with a whimper and a gasp. No longer does Washington ask, lips dancing down the inside of his thighs until he is kissing his stones and letting that hot tongue flick over them. 

The heat of his mouth, of his lips and tongue, is unbearably lovely. Especially in the ache of abstinence that had been forced upon him the previous weeks. The drag of Washington's tongue over the length of his cock was the first sip of cool water after days of marching in thick July heat. The slide of his lips over the head of his cock was the first taste of meat after months of famine. The rub of a slick pad of a single finger against his entrance was...was...Benjamin had no comparison for such a thing. It was solely itself for nothing else could ever brush against what it felt like to be teased by the broadness of his finger. 

It was ever-unique and ever-loved. The feeling of Washington pressing against him letting Ben prepare to be opened and taken. Teeth find their home in the meat of his thigh, a stinging that promised a bruise just as the tip of his finger presses against his furled entrance. Too much and not enough at once, Ben longs to be filled by him again, he twists and aches for it. He yearns with every breathe he can summon.

All he’s wanted for so long, so close and so far in the same moment. It is forgiveness for his indiscretions, it is apology for being kept so long out of favor. It is everything, to feel George’s flesh pressed within him, sinking inch by inch until his knuckles press against the meat of his rear. 

The stretch is distracted from by the wet slide of lips over the bite mark, the way they path from his inner thigh to the side of his knee, so sweetly leaving a kiss that stands counterpoint to the battles they’d been fighting only moments ago. There is a righteous sense of completion as Ben’s body remembers the place it was intended to be, wrapped around Washington and housing any part of him within himself. Taking him in and holding him no matter what the cause or intent.

It is only one single finger, soon a second joining to stretch his body to accommodate more, but it means so much more. So much as he twists them within Ben and allows his other hand to fall to the bend of his knee and guide his leg farther up. Until he can kiss his calf, and then his ankle. So sweetly, so generously. 

They do not speak, as Washington spreads his fingers and forces a hitched, wet, breath from Ben’s throat. They do not speak, as he is loosened slowly. They do not speak, as Washington bows his head and kisses the stretched rim of his hole. They do not speak, as dampness discolors the fabric of the pillow beneath his head. He does not know why he weeps so openly, not when his body is alight with nothing but the rawest of pleasures. 

Perhaps it is the sensation of forgiveness that moves him to his core. 

The knowledge that, despite the harshness of their tongues and the roughness of their hands that Washington would deign still to touch him as such. That he would still love him in the quiet of the night. That he has not been forsaken as he feared so wholly he had been. 

Relief, is what floods through him when Washington raises himself along the bed to kiss him. Lips sliding together as Ben parts his own after hardly a breath between them. He does not mind the taste of oil and flesh that sticks to Washington’s tongue as it pushes into his mouth, no he welcomes it with everything he has. He wraps his arms around the broad shoulders above him and presses them chest to chest and drinks in the sensation of being kissed.

Gasping into it, he does not let Washington dare part from him as the blunt tip of his cockhead bumps against him. Washington does not attempt to. He props himself above him, lowered down to his elbows as he sinks into another kiss. Another long, languid embrace that provides more than any words between them could. 

He presses against him again, a cant of his hips increasing the pressure slowly. Ben knows better than to push, he knows better than to twist his hips down and increase the pace himself as Washington moves forward more on his knees, prompting Ben’s legs to raise around his hips. 

They’ve never laid like this before. Never so close where Ben can feel the sweat-slick slide of skin over his chest, or the hard press of Washington’s nipples against his own chest. Or the heat of his breath panting against his own lips in the moments where they find their breath before falling back to each other once more. Ben relishes in each insistent point of contact, in the way the inside of his thighs scrape his hips, or the way his heels settle in the small of his back, or the way the head of Washington’s cock rubs against his hole so sweetly, promising so much. 

Another push forward, and the tip slides against him, pressing and pressing and pressing until it breaches him. He forgets, in the weeks where he was not permitted to warm Washington’s bedside, how intense it was to be filled by him. To what limits he was asked to stretch for him, how deep he was intended to take him into his body. 

His chest heaves for breath that will not come as he’s spread apart slowly for his General. His body resists and yields and tenses and relaxes in waves as Washington pauses with hardly the head of his cock within Ben’s body and pulls back slowly. For a moment, Ben’s mouth fills with pleads to continue, to not leave him so empty when he has only now just been granted the touch he’s longed for for so long. But Washington does not even dare to impart such cruelties to him. 

No, he peels himself slowly up from Ben, weight shifting as he cradles his pink-splotched face with one palm, thumb catching errant tears as they streak down his cheek. “Hush.” His voice is hoarse, heavy and rough in the moment and Ben can only keep his eyes open for a sliver of time to witness the emotions that storm across them. Something like affection, like warmth. Like sorrow. His lashes clump with fresh tears and he cannot bear to watch any longer, squeezing his eyes shut again as Washington leans and brushes their lips together in time with another movement of his hips, urging himself deeper. Deeper, deeper until Ben cannot fathom a place between them where they could ever be parted. 

Joined so wholly and so purely at once, taken and given over in the same moment. Washington waits, languishing in the moment, before he moves within him. Drawing the slick sounds of skin between them to rise. Ben cannot think of a better place to exist, he cannot think of anything that so drew him to tears than Washington’s arms around him as he slowly thrust back into his body with a tenderness that he had never known from the man. 

The words from before, twisted like a plea, echoed around in his chest.  _ Never leave me again.  _ It dawns upon him, with Washington’s face dragged from his own and buried against his collar again that it is not a tenderness that comes with forgiveness, it was one that is laced so deeply with want and need. 

He is not simply rewarding him for returning, he is begging him to stay. Tears surge fresh in his eyes and Ben clings to Washington with all the strength he has left in his body, fingertips digging into his shoulders in such a fashion that he knows will leave bruises. He has never dared mark his commander before but now, he cannot fathom a reason why he would not sink himself into the sweaty flesh of the man above him and keep him as his own. They rock together, begging and forgiving and forgiving and begging in perfect unison, as heat builds and crests and builds until Ben’s cock throbs for release between them. 

He does not need to ask, as Washington’s hand finds its place around it, stroking only a few times before fire singes at Ben’s blood and he tenses and releases with a wet gasp of Washington’s name. His real, give name. Never before uttered between them, and for a moment, Ben thinks he has cursed the one good thing he has been given. 

But Washington only redoubles, his hips moving harder and faster and making Ben’s body sing with overstimulated sparks as his breath hiccups in his chest and Washington’s hand milks every drop of his orgasm out of him before a rush of heat within himself signals Washington’s end. He pushes deep and rough again and again, pushing his seed deep within Ben. He marks him, he claims him. He does not remove himself from Ben’s body until the softness of his cock demands it, and even then it is a slow retreat.

He does not peel himself away. He does not immediately re-dress and dismiss Ben. They lay there, tangled together, breathing together. Bodies still joined by the slick flesh that sticks together, by hands that grasp at each other’s flesh. By legs that wind around one another. 

“I will not,” Ben breathes, voice thin and rasping. “I will not leave you, my General. I will not dare frighten you as such again.”

Washington’s head bows once more, but not to his collar or chest or groin as it had before. It finds place in the crook of his neck and the hands that Ben had used to bruise his back instead soothe a single, fearful, sob.

 

**Author's Note:**

> HMU on [Tumblr](http://tooeasilyconsidered.tumblr.com)


End file.
